DC Pierson schools a lazy student.

Perfect.

This is amazing

I greatly enjoyed reading this.

Yes and no. I like his message, even though he panders to the teenager a bit much. What I’m contesting, though, is the “just because I wrote it doesn’t make it more valid”.

I have a great interest in the meanings of songs. I want to know what the creator thought when the lyrics were written: where did they draw inspiration from, what does that song mean to them?

I go to songmeanings.net and get various responses to the lyrics: “opinions”? As always, better word: interpretation. I’ll get interpretations and sometimes someone will link to an interview where the band member said what it’s about, even loosely.

Could other interpretations possibly be wrong? Of course. What’s right is what the author intended. You could say Winnie The Pooh is a metaphor for being high on acid, and that can be your interpretation, but that doesn’t give you any special license. We all interpret our world subjectively, and to us it can be “right” and have that meaning, but that doesn’t mean it’s objectively wrong about what the author intended.

In this case, if the author himself really doesn’t know whether it was real or not, kudos to him. That’s neat. However, I think many creators will try to add meaning to their work by creating content that’s so ambiguous it could mean anything. I do not consider that skill.

Unless an author is going out of their way to have an ambiguous ending that not even they could know, then there is a proper interpretation: the author’s intention. You can be wrong. For that, this image is admirable in its feel but falls on its sword in practice.